Chemist to MD

[Elleone44]

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Ok...my issues are no different than many of you. Did not perform well in school . Graduated with a degree in Chemistry. I have a few B's and C's in my science and A's in Math (CalcI-CalcIII). My overall gpa is low......2.6, but science is not so bad. My question is what would be best in light of schools just averaging your grades. Retake only classes with a B or less and work to get A's? Or enroll in a SMP and take all the courses over?

What are your thoughts on community college versus university?

on campus vs. online?
I have a two yr. college where I can take many of the science courses online. but the four yr. college is on campus. I work a full time job, I have a family and a mortgage?



Any advice will be valuable to me.......

 

[the duck]

Ok...my issues are no different than many of you. Did not perform well in school . Graduated with a degree in Chemistry. I have a few B's and C's in my science and A's in Math (CalcI-CalcIII). My overall gpa is low......2.6, but science is not so bad. My question is what would be best in light of schools just averaging your grades. Retake only classes with a B or less and work to get A's? Or enroll in a SMP and take all the courses over?

What are your thoughts on community college versus university?

on campus vs. online?
I have a two yr. college where I can take many of the science courses online. but the four yr. college is on campus. I work a full time job, I have a family and a mortgage?



Any advice will be valuable to me.......

Many SMP will require atleast a 3.0 to releave you of your $40,000 or so. I would strongly advise against going to a CC. If you want to make it to a DO (I'd forget about MD at this point) you will need to show that you can handle difficult coursework. A low GPA at a 4-year, followed by a high GPA at a CC does not look good. Also, the majority of medical schools do not accept online coursework.

 

[Elleone44]

Duck: So you think that online course from a university are unacceptable as well?? Even though they may be the same course? not interested in DO

 

[the duck]

Do a little reasearch into it, but I'm pretty med schools don't like online coursework, period.

Why no DO? (let the fun begin)

 

[Cro]

Lol at no DO, it's your choice, but quite an uninformed and ignorant one if I do say so myself. You don't really have the option to be picky at this point. Since you can't use grade replacement to your advantage, your best bet is to enroll in a post-bac program at a university and get that GPA above a 3.0. It would also be a good idea to retake any pre-med requirements you might have done poorly on. Once it's above a 3.0, yo can either keep trying to bring the GPA up to a competitive range, apply for a SMP, or apply to the Caribbean for that MD you want so much.

Edit: To reinforce a few things duck said, online courses are definitely not recommended and many medical schools don't recognize courses taken online. It's fine to take one or two throughout your undergrad career, but it certainly shouldn't make up the bulk of your credits.

 

[Elpenor]

not interested in DO

Fortunately you won't have to worry about that because DO schools won't be interested in you either with your stats

 

[ronaldo23]

Ok...my issues are no different than many of you. Did not perform well in school . Graduated with a degree in Chemistry. I have a few B's and C's in my science and A's in Math (CalcI-CalcIII). My overall gpa is low......2.6, but science is not so bad. My question is what would be best in light of schools just averaging your grades. Retake only classes with a B or less and work to get A's? Or enroll in a SMP and take all the courses over?

What are your thoughts on community college versus university?

on campus vs. online?
I have a two yr. college where I can take many of the science courses online. but the four yr. college is on campus. I work a full time job, I have a family and a mortgage?



Any advice will be valuable to me.......

if you can get a 33+ on your MCAT (90+ percentile), and raise your GPA to above 3.0, through an SMP, you will be competitive at DO schools. I say you need that high MCAT to compensate for being well below the do gpa average (3.5 I think it is?). Neither CC nor online classes are an option. Just by the fact that it is virtually impossible to raise your GPA to a 3.4+, (you already have 4 years course-work and so even if you did another 4 years coursework and got all 4.0s, your GPA would still be 3.3) US MD is probably out of the picture (though I will never say impossible).

Or you can enroll in the carib as your grades stand now, but that is a far riskier play.

 

[Brigade4Radiant]

if you can get a 33+ on your MCAT (90+ percentile), and raise your GPA to above 3.0, through an SMP, you will be competitive at DO schools. I say you need that high MCAT to compensate for being well below the do gpa average (3.5 I think it is?). Neither CC nor online classes are an option. Just by the fact that it is virtually impossible to raise your GPA to a 3.4+, (you already have 4 years course-work and so even if you did another 4 years coursework and got all 4.0s, your GPA would still be 3.3) US MD is probably out of the picture (though I will never say impossible).

Or you can enroll in the carib as your grades stand now, but that is a far riskier play.

A 3.4 and 33+ with a good story will get him into a state MD school usually.

Not quite, posts like these are why you have to be careful with info on SDN. A score of 26 is competitive for DO schools. Also DO schools calculate GPA differently in that if you just take a masters program or retake your science classes that grade will factor into your GPA.

 

[ronaldo23]

A 3.4 and 33+ with a good story will get him into a state MD school usually.

Not quite, posts like these are why you have to be careful with info on SDN. A score of 26 is competitive for DO schools. Also DO schools calculate GPA differently in that if you just take a masters program or retake your science classes that grade will factor into your GPA.

I said a 3.0 and 33, not a 3.4 and 33. What I said is that it would be nearly impossible to get a 3.4 GPA, and that at best, your talking like a 3.0-3.1 if you start acing things in the SMP. While the DO national average is 26, with a 3.0-3.1 (well below of the 3.5 DO average), you would need a much higher MCAT than the average to be competitive (probably your right though, 33+ is pretty extreme). Good point though about DO and grade replacement, forgot about that- if you retake those classes you can get a higher gpa for the DO app. but the fact remains that getting above a 3.1 gpa for md applications would be pretty impossible.

 

[Brigade4Radiant]

I said a 3.0 and 33, not a 3.4 and 33. What I said is that it would be nearly impossible to get a 3.4 GPA, and that at best, your talking like a 3.0-3.1 if you start acing things in the SMP. While the DO national average is 26, with a 3.0-3.1 (well below of the 3.5 DO average), you would need a much higher MCAT than the average to be competitive (probably your right though, 33+ is pretty extreme). Good point though about DO and grade replacement, forgot about that- if you retake those classes you can get a higher gpa for the DO app. but the fact remains that getting above a 3.1 gpa for md applications would be pretty impossible.

Yeah 3.3-3.4 are at the low end of MD but since the average is around 3.6 I would say a fair amount are accepted. Also some low tier D.O schools have GPAs around 3.2 and MCATs around 23

 

[coffeebythelake]

not interested in DO

with your current stats, you wouldn't even have a chance with DO school.